Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.
Theodore Isaac Rubin
Life isn’t going to hand me what I am waiting for. Nobody is magically going to appear in my life to grant my deepest wishes.
If I know these two things to be true then my life is simpler, because then I know that I have to go create the things I want.
The danger lies in thinking that the path will be clear and easy because then every obstacle gains more importance than it deserves in my mind.
This is good, because if somebody handed me everything I want, suddenly it wouldn’t be worth as much. It’s the hard work to get somewhere that makes arriving there truly worthwhile. And it is the grinding in between – the self-doubt, the late nights, the picking up the phone to make another cold call when you don’t want to – that build me into the person who can truly appreciate the end result.
If I know this to be true then the grinding is suddenly just another part of the process, not something to be overwhelmed by. It can be anticipated, accounted for and, to some degree, buffered to prevent me from burning out on the way to where I want to go.
Most importantly – every time I do run into another obstacle I am able to rededicate myself to the importance of my goal. I consistently affirm to myself that what I am doing is worth all of the effort, which means that I am worth all of this